Is “Fear Free” Just for Veterinary Patients?

The veterinary industry is facing a crisis relating to its employees’ wellbeing, but these problems can be mitigated with familiar tools. A sea change in patient care initiated with the founding of Fear Free in 2016. Undoubtedly, the benefits of reducing fear, anxiety, and stress in pets have been transformative. But what about the passionate team providing this tender care?

The industry crisis is evident in high DVM suicide and burnout rates. Symptoms can also be seen in the technician’s low pay, high turnover, and the short time they stay in the profession.

How can such a complicated problem be diagnosed and remedied? How can veterinary hospital leaders better support their teams? The problems may seem insurmountable. These burnout and stress issues are not an ADR (“Ain’t doin’ right”) that you can fix with a shot of Dualpen and check back in a week. Hope is not a plan.

Yet, it is possible to diagnose the symptoms in a familiar way.

What ails each clinic may be unique and Subjective on the surface. However, Objective facts can be gathered through assessments and empirical evidence. A differential diagnosis can be Assessed using this discovery process. Once you realize the problem or problems, a Plan can be developed.

Communication is often the root cause of employees’ stress. For example, body language is never silent. Sometimes leader’s passion - for the patient or task in front of them - may prevent them from recognizing the collateral damage happening around them. Team members are always making sense of people’s words and deeds, even the unintended ones. Leaders must understand how their behavior is affecting the behavior of others. They are intentionally or unintentionally reinforcing the current culture. Whether we like it or not, what happens at the top cascades across organizations. Often, a dose of strategic awareness is enough to start healing a broken culture.

The industry is facing an unprecedented test on top of this global pandemic. Quarantining has led to staff shortages and surging demand from the bored masses who are emptying shelters by adopting new furry friends. It has also led to supply chain issues and boorish clients who are unaccustomed to long waits at their vet. These new problems exacerbate the everyday challenges of working in the field, like long days, economic euthanasia, and student debt. Too often, there aren’t enough puppy kisses to go around to balance the physical and mental grind.

Now is the time to meet your staff in the trenches and appreciate the challenges they face. What would happen if industry leaders could alter the trenches? What if they were as conscientious about creating a fear-free environment for employees as they are their patients? That, too, would be transformative.

Psychological safety is defined as the employee’s “sense of being able to show and employ one’s self without fear of negative consequences to self-image, status, or career.”

In high psychologically safe work cultures, this plays out as permission for candor. A nurse isn’t afraid to question a doctor. Employees can be a safeguard to prevent a decimal place error before the injection is given or performing the right surgery on the wrong location. It shows up when everyone learns from failures and succeeds as a collective unit instead of covering up those inevitable human errors. It is about fixing problems, not blame. Creating a psychologically safe work climate does not mean managers have to be soft, overlook mistakes, or that a lack of accountability exists. Psychological safety is not the absence of conflict; it is about a positive, constructive conflict that creates resilient, high-performing teams.

Creating a psychologically safe work environment is not a cure-all. Still, research shows it is associated with decreased turnover, and it positively affects team-learning, learning from failure, employee voice, innovation, creativity, collaboration, empowerment, engagement, and feelings of vitality. That sounds like just what a doctor should prescribe to inoculate veterinary teams and help employees flourish despite today’s pandemic challenges and the industry's hazards.